Week 5

The first month in your affiliate program is history now. Your company will start to appreciate some tangible results, and affiliate marketing will be well on its way to revolutionizing the way you do business.

Again, continue with your routines. The number of inactive affiliates should be slowing down at this point, and the number of new questions they ask will be limited. Be sure to keep your ear to the ground about what your affiliates are saying in the discussion boards, and think about tweaking your program if you’re not happy with the performance. One school of thought is that you should give three months for your affiliate program to get legs, but that is old school. You’re working on Internet time, and three months without results is not acceptable.

This will be the first time that you pay your affiliates, provided that you are paying monthly. Remember the close relationship that you established with one of the finance people in your company? It’s time to renew it, because you’re going to need to spend some money to pay those affiliates who have been getting results for you.

• Have the affiliate team test and track performance of their own and other programs on their personal sites

• Participate in discussion boards

• Monitor the competition

• Identify and track prospective affiliates

• Target e-mail to inactive affiliates

• Compose tutorial

• Network with other affiliate managers

• Participate in your affiliate community

• Review log of questions asked by affiliates and add any new questions and answers to your FAQ

• Cut commission checks